I wrote about slavery where I live - What We Are Is Who We Were - and tonight the special television documentary about a local family with ancestors who bought and sold people to make their livelihood is airing. It will also air tomorrow night. PBS is offering this Point Of View documentary - Traces of the Trade.

We don't like to be around people who point out our flaws, our mistakes and our bad behavior. We don't like to feel uncomfortable. An honest look at our past, acceptance of the truth and courage to be better human beings would do wonders to heal our own emotional wounds. And also would go leap years toward healing humankind's wounds.

First-time filmmaker Katrina Browne makes a troubling discovery — her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in US history. She and nine fellow descendants set off to retrace the Triangle Trade: from their old hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba. Step by step, they uncover the extent of Northern complicity in slavery while stumbling through the minefield of contemporary race relations. In this bicentennial year of the abolition of the US slave trade, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North offers powerful new perspectives on the black/white divide. An official selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Katrina Browne spent two years fine-tuning this documentary as a WGBH filmmaker in residence. Providing a supportive workspace and editorial and production resources through our Filmmakers in Residence program is just one of the missions of the WGBH Lab.

When I last visited Europe, I went to Austria, Italy and Germany. While there, I met a couple from Sydney, Australian. Hans and Lynn asked me to go along one rainy day in their rental car to be a tourist with them. So I did. We met where we were staying in Villach, Austria. And then again in Venice, Italy and spent a day together on Murano. After I returned home in the USA, they came to stay with me for a few days in Rhode Island. Recently I received an email from them which included the following:

Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A.

A Message from English citizen John Cleese to the citizens of the United States of America : In light of your failure to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas , which she does not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect: You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.

1. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut'without skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

3. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as 'like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem, God Save The Queen.

4. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

5. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

6. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

8. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

9. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) -roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

11. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. Australian beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer.They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them.

12. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie McDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try - the Australians and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

14. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America . Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

15. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

16 An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

17. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in season. God save the Queen. Only He can. John Cleese

I found this humorus, or is it humourous?

After googling the title and John Cleese, it appears I am late to the "party" - I am using this term loosely. Also, it appears that it is unclear at best as to whether or not John Cleese actually wrote this. In any case.....I continue to perpetuate it.

This was someone's comment left on a post after reading it:

The thing is this isn't funny:................................................................

Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion. Read the article from the Washington Post

The Wimbledon Websitehas live scoring and you can purchase live streaming. Although the live streaming didn't work for me at all on Saturday, June 28, so I watched it on Justin TV, ESPN and NBC. The picture on Justin TV isn't as clear as TV, but at least they show matches in the entirety...................................................................

Friday, June 27, 2008

This is the complete interview with Rafael Nadal and a Rafa promotional TV spot. I put this on a previous post with an embed from ESPN. However, it was not complete. This is................................................................

I haven't been that happy with the streaming, as it sometimes has been unreliable. However, you can watch Rafa play by downloading his match from the Wimbledon site and it is an excellent picture. It doesn't accommodate IMAC. One benefit is that there are no commercials.

will appear at the lower left location on the streaming screen after the commercial.

Also, you can catch some of the matches live on Justin TV for free and it works on both PC and IMAC. This is good because on the first link listed below, at least, it is the very same as whatI can see on the Wimbledon site where I paid $25.www.justin.tv/slazengerwww.justin.tv/microemissionWhy do you want to watch Wimbledon online instead of ESPN?Because they jump from match to match and you don't get to see the match you want from beginning toend.

................................................Pictures of Rafa taken in Rotterdam last February 2008.Published June 24 in a French magazine. Thanks to Bluemama-Mathilde at The Forum -www.rafaelnadal.com......................................................................................................................Hot Hot Hot!

Regarding $25 The Wimbledon live streaming:I do not have success with this live streaming. I do have a picture finally, but it buffers every 15 seconds for me. In my opinion, not worth the $25 when you can get the streaming of Rafa's matches elsewhere for free most of the tournament .

ESPN and NBC are broadcasting, but they jump around and for now you only get to see parts of matches. Very disappointing for those of us who have favorite players we want to see a match in its entirety.

......................................................Another video of the Nadal d Djokovic Queen's Final Match June 15, 2008Uploaded by tennis24gr......................................................

.................................................Thanks to Ines, Ganda at www.rafaelnadal.comwhere Rafa's Wimbledon blog can be found along with many pictures, articles and suggestions where to see the matches on The Forum.

What do you know about slavery in the United States of America? Did you learn anything about slavery history in your classrooms? I didn’t.

When I was in school, the USA spoke of the propaganda that the Soviet Union, Russia, used as their truth, their history. The USA history that I was taught in my education was propaganda. I was not taught anything about the history of the Native American Indians or the Black slavery. I was not taught anything about the internment camps of the Japanese. Where did I learn about these things? On PBS television shows.

When I was in my all white high school in the 1960s, I found a book in my school library, Black Like Me. I read it with much interest.

Slavery By Another Name by Douglas Blackmon is a book that reveals that once slavery was outlawed, slavery was given another name. I have heard the author twice now speak and just Friday, June 20th, Douglas Blackmon was on Bill Moyer’s Journal. In the 1930’s until World War II, slavery existed.

From the transcript of this segment of Bill Moyer’s Journal, June 20th, 2008 with Douglas Blackmon:

BILL MOYERS: How is it, you and I both Southerners, how is it we could grow up right after this era, and be so unaware of what had just happened to our part of the country?

DOUGLAS BLACKMON: Well, I think there are a lot of explanations for that. The biggest one is simply that this is a history that we haven't wanted to know as a country. We've engaged in a in a kind of collective amnesia about this, particularly about the severity of it.

And the official history of this time, the conventional history tended to minimize the severity of the things that were done again and again and again, and to focus instead, on the idea, on a lot of false mythologies. Like, this idea that freed slaves after emancipation became lawless and sort of went wild, and thievery, and all sorts of crimes being committed by African-Americans right after the Civil War and during Reconstruction. But when you go back, as I did, and look at the arrest records from that period of time, there's just no foundation for that. And the reality was there was hardly any crime at all. And huge numbers of people were being arrested on these specious charges, so they could be forced back into labor.

I live in Newport County in Rhode Island, USA. Amistad the movie was shot here. My favorite scene in the movie is of the argument before the Supreme Court by John Adams. Personal note: My friend made Adams bedroom canopy and bedding, which is in the scene just before the Supreme Court ruling.

I learned tonight while googling Slavery in Rhode Island that the founder, William Ellery Channing, of the Unitarian Church where I go, if I go to church, had a slave in his household. I had already known that slaves were auctioned off 12 minutes from where my house is from a previous google search. This place is in downtown Newport, Rhode Island. And that households here were typical if they owned slaves.

The following excerpt is taken from www.eyesofglory.com“Black HistoryHere in Newport, Rhode Island we have several physical ‘touch stones’ to remind us of the legacy left by those Africans and later African Americans who graced our city with their presence. From 1696 when the first documented slave ship, the ‘Sea Flower’, touched our shores, to the present, African Americans have worked, raised their families and prospered in the city by the sea.

The American Slave Trade and Newport share similar origins. Newport, the most prosperous of colonial American ports, saw unprecedented growth throughout the 18th century; mostly from the export and trade of rum, spermaceti candles and slaves. By 1784, the fledgling state government abolished slavery.

Many of the slaves that came to Newport’s shore would arrive, like most goods, at the Long Wharf. These slaves would be auctioned off to the highest bidders at the Granary (market), which is today known as the Brick Market at the foot of Washington Square.”

Brick Market is in the central tourist area of Newport, today.

Bristol, Rhode Island is a small quaint town just over the Bristol Bridge from my hometown of Portsmouth. Bristol has a Fourth of July parade, which it boasts is the longest running Fourth of July parade in the country.

The PBS television channel will be airing in June 2008, P.O.V.’s TRACES OF THE TRADE: A STORY OF THE DEEP NORTH told by Katrina Browne, whose family is from Bristol, Rhode Island. This is the bicentennial year of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade. Katrina Browne discovered that her slave-trading ancestors from Bristol, Rhode Island were not an aberration, but rather, they were just the most prominent actors in the North's vast complicity in slavery, buried in myths of Northern innocence.

Katrina Browne — a direct descendant of Mark Anthony DeWolf, the first slaver in the family — took the unusual step of writing to 200 descendants. She invited them to journey with her from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba and back, retracing the Triangle Trade that made the DeWolfs the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. Nine relatives signed up. TRACES OF THE TRADE: A STORY FROM THE DEEP NORTH is Browne's account of the journey.

From the transcript of Bill Moyer’s Journal, June 20th, 2008:

KATRINA BROWNE: My DeWolf ancestors were known as the "Great Folk" in Bristol. There were professors and writers, artists and architects, and many Episcopal ministers. I was proud to be related to them. It never occurred to me to ask how we got so established.

What no one in my family realized was that the DeWolfs were the largest slave-trading family in US history. They brought over 10,000 Africans to the Americas in chains. Half a million of their descendants could be alive today.

The slave trade was illegal for most of the time the DeWolfs were practicing it. To maneuver around the law, they secured a political favor from none other than President Thomas Jefferson, whose campaign they'd supported. Jefferson appointed their brother-in-law as Bristol's customs official. This man always happened to be looking the other way as DeWolf ships went in and out of harbor.

…At the Bristol Historical Society, tucked away in a corner on the second floor, there was a file cabinet, full of DeWolf papers. These eerie records revealed the details of the logical economic model that the DeWolfs developed from 1769 to 1820. Here's how they made it work.

First they got the financing together. They recruited fellow townspeople to buy shares in their voyages and eventually started their own bank. They also started an insurance company to cover the risk. Rum was the prime currency of the slave trade, so James acquired a distillery from his father-in-law. The DeWolfs also purchased ships, mostly from builders in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The ships took rum to the Guinea Coast to trade for Africans. "July 4th, 1795, bought nine prime slaves, one woman and eight men and paid for them tobacco, rum, hats, bread, mackerel." Many of the enslaved Africans were brought to work on plantations that the DeWolfs established in Cuba. These plantations supplied sugar and molasses needed to make the rum back in Bristol. They also served as holding places for Africans while the DeWolfs waited for slave prices to go up at auction. "Havana, Sept. 11, 1806, John DeWolf of Bristol, Sale of 121 Negroes." Total income: 36,300 dollars, which today equals 553,000 dollars.

The largest number of slaves were sold in Havana and Charleston. But Rhode Island slavers did business in more than 40 markets in the West Indies, North and South America. Rhode Island became the state most complicit in the American slave trade. Rum, Africans, sugar, rum. The efficient wheels of the Triangle Trade were set in motion again and again.

Check out:Rhode Island’s Slave History -The Unrighteous Traffic7 part series“The traffic was so lucrative that nearly half the ships that sailed to Africa (from Newport, Rhode Island) did so after 1787 - the year Rhode Island outlawed the trade.” Source: Rhode Island's Slave History

If you suspect an existing case of human trafficking today,call the national human trafficking hotline 1-888-373 -7888

In the following video group of children allegedby government to be JEM fighters or sympathizers(there is a belief that they were street childrenrounded up by troops). In the video the childrenare subjected to torture called the sand bath.They are beaten(you can hear their screams )and forced to crawl and lie with cheeks on 102degrees Farenheit hot sand . A child was beggingfor water and he was laughed at and mockedand ordered to put his cheek back on the sand.::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Friday, June 20, 2008 on United Nations World Refugee Day, students, activists and community leaders in cities across the country are calling attention to the 2.5 million displaced from their homes in Darfur by gathering at the stores and headquarters of Olympic sponsors Coca-Cola, General Electric, Swatch and Volkswagen to hold these companies accountable for their silence on the genocide in Darfur.

In April, 16 out of 19 top Olympic sponsors received failing grades in a Dream for Darfur report for their silence on the Darfur genocide despite their unique position of leverage with China, the 2008 Olympic host and the underwriter of the slaughter in Darfur.

China buys the bulk of Sudan's oil and sells weapons to the regime in Khartoum, while shielding the regime at the United Nations. For the past year, well-known companies such as Coca-Cola, General Electric, Swatch and Volkswagen have refused to ask China to use its sway with Sudan to end the violence in Darfur.

Sponsors can play a vital role in encouraging China to use its influence with Khartoum to bring peace to Darfur. But if the sponsors are going to continue to ignore the genocide in Darfur, we need to let them know that we will ignore them during the Olympics.

On August 8th, as the world gathers to watch the Opening Ceremonies in Beijing, we need to make sure that people don't forget about the atrocities in Darfur. We ask you to pledge to turn off the commercials of select corporate sponsors during the Games by joining our Switch Over campaign.

Visit our website to let us know that instead of watching sponsors' commercials during the Olympic Games in August, you will Switch Over to watch our Alternative Opening Ceremony and the "Darfur Olympics" -- a broadcast by Mia Farrow from a refugee camp.

A few hours from now I will step on stage in Detroit, Michigan to announce my support for Senator Barack Obama. From now through Election Day, I intend to do whatever I can to make sure he is elected President of the United States.

Over the next four years, we are going to face many difficult challenges -- including bringing our troops home from Iraq, fixing our economy, and solving the climate crisis. Barack Obama is clearly the candidate best able to solve these problems and bring change to America.

This moment and this election are too important to let pass without taking action.

That's why I am asking you to join me in showing your support by making a contribution to this campaign today:

Who is Behind these Lies?

Roger Stone boasts about being the sleaziest man in politics and that his rules are “Attack, attack, attack—never defend” and “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack.” As a young operative, Stone was involved in Watergate, causing him to be fired by Bob Dole. Stone was also forced to cut ties with New York Senate Republicans after he left a harassing message on the voicemail of Eliot Spitzer’s father. Even Republican Ed Rollins says Stone “always had this reputation of being a guy who exaggerated things, who pretended he did things. Roger was never on Nixon’s staff, was never on the White House staff. I don’t think you’ll find anyone in the business who trusts him. Roger was always a little rat.” Stone recently said “McCain himself should not run a slash-and-burn campaign, but a slash-and-burn campaign will have to be run by others.”

Floyd Brown, the leader of the National Campaign Fund, the Legacy Committee, Citizens for a Safe and Prosperous America and the Policy Issues Institute, once bragged he was part of the “the heart and soul of the right-wing conspiracy.” has a history of surfacing every four years to make right-wing attacks against Democrats in presidential elections. Most infamously, Brown was responsible for the racist 1988 “Willie Horton” ad against Michael Dukakis. Brown harassed the Clintons throughout Bill Clinton’s administration, with even George H.W. Bush calling his behavior in the 1992 presidential election—which included harassing the family of a recent suicide victim—“filthy campaign tactics.” After writing a 2000 book about Al Gore that went little-noticed, in 2004, Brown and David Bossie, working as the group Citizens United, make a movie called Celsius 41.11 and ran television ads attacking John Kerry.

David Bossie, who runs Citizens United, has paired with Floyd Brown for years. Bossie and Brown harassed the Clintons throughout Bill Clinton’s administration, with even George H.W. Bush calling his behavior in the 1992 presidential election—which included harassing the family of a recent suicide victim—“filthy campaign tactics.” After writing a 2000 book about Al Gore that went little-noticed, in 2004, Brown and Bossie, working as the group Citizens United, made a movie called Celsius 41.11 and ran television ads attacking John Kerry. In 1998, Bossie was fired from his job with the House Committee investigating Bill Clinton. When Bossie selectively released tapes, removing information that exonerated the Clintons, and improperly obtained phone records, even Newt Gingrich said he was “embarrassed for the conference at the circus that went on.”

About Me

I love my life. I love where I live. And I am passionate about my passions. I love to dance. Necessary to live: music, piano, singing, writing, acting, painting.
I have been fighting for and supporting the arts all my adult life. Since 2004, I have been working with other activists to end the Darfur genocide.
I have traveled to Europe many times since my early twenties. Places I have been: many USA states including Hawaii, Montreal, Canada, Barbados, France, Spain, Luxembourg, England, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Germany - and have wonderful memories.
My last trip was in May - June 2013 to Spain.
I would like to travel to Europe and Kyoto, Japan.
I love the southwest where I have visited Hopi, Navajo, Zia and San Idlefonso potters.
Life is exciting and I intend to live it full-out to the end.
B.S. and M.M., both in music

Links

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Khartoum, Sudan Stop Genocide Time
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Spain Time
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Melbourne Time
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Hawaii Time
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RAFA NADAL -BRING BACK LONG PANTS - SLEEVELESS TOPS
Double Click on Videos to Enlarge
Darfur - The Abandoned Genocide - a video by Sandra Hammel
Want to help? Call 1~800~GENOCIDE
"May I Suggest" by Susan Werner
Satchita - Playing for Change
Stand By Me ~ Playing for Change
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Genocide is not only a word,
it is crying of the whole human race.
There is nothing redeeming about being silent
when speaking up is the humane thing to do.
The honor and integrity of the human race is at stake.

"...And these for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment..." Hemann Hesse STEPPENWOLF